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Bringing Bones To Life

Renovations and a refocused mission signal a new beginning at the Texas Memorial
Museum.

By Ben Rehder

The folks at the Texas Memorial Museum - the exhibit hall of the Texas Natural
Science Center at the University of Texas in Austin - knew what they were doing when
they designed the layout. As you enter through the main doors into the Great Hall on the
second floor, the first thing you notice - how could you miss it? - is the skeleton of a
giant birdlike creature soaring high above you. Suddenly you understand how a mouse
must feel when being shadowed by a hawk. Thus are you introduced to the Texas
pterosaur, a prime specimen of the largest flying animal ever found and rightly
considered one of the greatest discoveries in the history of paleontology.

"It's the thing people really remember," says Ed Theriot, director of the TNSC since
1997. "Kids come in and they immediately notice it, and you hear them screaming about
the big bird, and of course they want to know if it could eat you." It couldn't. What's
more, it wasn't a bird, it was a reptile. More on that later.

First, a little background on the museum is in order, starting with the fact that its mission
has been refined in recent years. For much of the museum's 68-year history, its
collections included a modest number of items related to cultural history: Navajo rugs,
antique firearms, pre-Columbian pottery, Mexican folk art and more. Today, those
holdings are gone, and the emphasis is solely on the natural sciences. The changes began
five years ago, under Theriot's watch, and he calls the decision a "no-brainer."

"Frankly, we didn't have very much in the way of a cultural history collection in terms of
numbers or one that told the story of Texas," says Theriot. "With the advent of the Bob
Bullock Texas State History Museum almost next door and the Center for American
History collections here at UT already, we had become redundant. Our natural history
collections, on the other hand, were extensive, with specimens or objects from at least 95
percent of the counties in Texas, and we were very active in Texas natural science
research. We didn't change so much as our mission statement caught up with the reality
of who we really were."

The changes continued in the summer of 2007, when museum staff took advantage of a
closing for fire- and life-safety improvements to reorganize and update many of the
dioramas and to implement a new service that delivers on-demand exhibit information
directly to visitors' cell phones. But some things stay the same, as repeat visitors will
notice. The museum is still divided into four distinct display areas, each with its own
unique story to tell.

The Hall of Geology and Paleontology, arguably the showiest of the exhibit halls,
features more than 5,000 square feet of fossils (from dinosaurs and other prehistoric
creatures), as well as an impressive array of native meteorites, rocks and minerals. The
displays are presented in chronological fashion - from the earliest days of the planet to
the age of dinosaurs up to the present day. Theriot points out that the land we call Texas
has been home to some of the world's strangest and most spectacular creatures, and this
hall certainly backs that up.

The Onion Creek mosasaur, for in-stance, immediately calls to mind a mythical sea
serpent. With a slender 30-foot-long body (the head alone measures nearly 5 feet), whale-like flippers, and a flat, powerful tail, the mosasaur moved with speed and agility through
the shallow seas that covered much of present-day North America during the late
Cretaceous period. A loosely hinged jaw, like that of a snake, allowed the mosasaur to
swallow large prey. The museum's specimen was found, as the name implies, on the
banks of Onion Creek, four miles outside the Austin city limits, in 1934, by UT geology
students.

An eye-catching, albeit headless, example of a glyptodon anchors the Ice Age display,
where it shares space with a giant ground sloth, a Colombian mammoth and a saber-toothed cat, among others. The glyptodon was a large, armored mammal related to the
modern-day armadillo, and one might liken its size, shape and weight to a Volkswagen
Beetle. Unfortunately, it moved much more slowly - only a couple of miles per hour -
which made it vulnerable to ambitious predators, including the native human population.

Other highlights include Eryops megacephalus, an amphibian whose 6-foot-long skeleton
reminds a casual viewer of an alligator, though they are not related; the dimetrodon, a
long, lizard-like animal with a distinctive spinal fin or "sail" and two rows of teeth; and
an interactive computer station that will answer all your questions about meteorites.

The Great Hall is home to Natural Wonders: Treasures of the TNSC, an aptly named
exhibit. The theme that binds this diverse collection together is that each item is truly a
wonder of nature, and each provides insight into the history of the natural world.

Take the aforementioned Texas ptero-saur. Consider the fact that its wingspan was as
broad as a small airplane, and you'll understand why pterosaurs, the first vertebrate to
take flight, ruled the skies from the late Triassic period to the end of the Cretaceous
period (228 to 65 million years ago). This specimen was found in Big Bend National Park
in 1971.

Also on display is an extensive collection of gems and minerals be-queathed to the
museum in 1969 by Col. E.M. Barron, a former Texas legislator. Recent acquisitions
include a dazzling 1,778-carat blue topaz, roughly the size of a man's fist and heavier
than a full can of soda.

Did you know that one-quarter of all animals on Earth are beetles, with more than
350,000 species described to date? You won't doubt it after seeing the artfully presented
scarab beetle collection, on loan from research associate John C. Abbott.

Colors of Nature alternates the brilliant color photographs of Greg Lasley and John
Ingram. The current exhibit, Antarctica: Life at the Bottom of the World, features
Lasley's vivid shots of Antarctica's incredibly varied and abundant wildlife, including
penguins, seals, whales and birds.

Of course, a visit to the museum wouldn't be complete without a stop at the Great Hall's
gift shop, where you'll find everything from fine jewelry to T-shirts to educational
posters, books and games.

The Hall of Texas Wildlife brings you face to face with some of our state's most
interesting native fauna - bison, javelinas, snakes, turtles, ringtail cats and prairie
chickens - while showcasing the ecosystems in which they live. Most memorable is the
diorama of a cougar protecting its downed prey, a white-tailed deer, from coyotes looking
for an easy meal.

Texas boasts more than 266 species of fishes, and the renovated Fishes of Texas exhibit
brings them to you in style, via a video guide, an interactive multimedia display and
mounted specimens from the TNSC's collection. The star of the show is "Splash," a
replica of the Texas-record blue catfish caught in Lake Texoma in 2003.

Night Shift gives you a glimpse into the world of animals that come out after sundown
and explains how they are physically suited for their nocturnal ramblings. For example,
many of the mammals on display have a reflective layer, called the tapetum lucidum, in
the back of the eye. This layer increases the amount of light caught by the retina,
improving vision in low-light conditions. Additional sensory input comes by way of
specialized whiskers called vibrissae, which play a role in the detection of obstacles.

The Hall of Biodiversity houses the museum's newest exhibit, Explore Evolution, which
"gives a modern shine to Charles Darwin's 146-year-old theory on evolution." Indeed it
does. Here, seven galleries investigate evolution in organisms ranging from the smallest
to the largest. You'll learn how research into evolution is fundamental in advancing
modern medicine, agriculture and biotechnology. For example, one gallery addresses the
rapidly evolving HIV virus that causes AIDS and how scientists are striving to
understand it in order to develop a vaccine and a cure.

This is a hands-on area - "more of a learning center and less of a traditional static
exhibit," says Theriot - with a variety of interactive displays. You can measure the
beaks of finches from the Galapagos Islands and discover that physical changes occur in
response to environmental pressures and food availability. Play a round of "fly karaoke,"
in which you listen to a fly's courtship song, then attempt to record a duplicate version.
Use a microscope to study core samples of a newly discovered single-celled diatom
found deep beneath Yellowstone Lake. Analyze fossil evidence from Pakistan that links
modern whales to their four-legged ancestors. Compare human and chimpanzee DNA
and understand the key differences. Or take a video tour of an ant fungus garden.

Theriot says, "We want people to come to the museum, look around and say, 'Wow.' We
hope they come away inspired and wanting to learn more."
Mission accomplished.

Details

The Texas Memorial Museum (512-471-1604, www.utexas.edu/tmm/)
2400 Trinity Street, on The University of Texas at Austin campus
Hours: Monday through Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m.; Sunday, 1-5
p.m.
Admission: Free
Parking: Available (for a fee) at the U.T. parking garage, located at 2500 San Jacinto
Blvd., just north of the museum

Track Down Dinosaurs

To view world-class examples of dinosaur footprints, make tracks to the small building
just outside the museum's main entrance. There, you'll find two trackways: one from the
broad hind feet of a sauropod dinosaur that could have weighed up to 30 tons, the other
from a carnivorous theropod, which, despite its much smaller size, might have been
stalking the sauropod as prey. Both creatures lived during the early Cretaceous period,
more than 100 million years ago. The internationally famous trackways were collected
from the limestone bed of Paluxy Creek near Glen Rose, Texas, in 1939. Unfortunately,
the footprints are deteriorating. "Years of constant exposure to moisture have taken their
toll," explains TNSC Director Ed Theriot. "We have begun plans to restore and move the
tracks and are awaiting an estimate from an accredited stone curatorial company to do the
work."

Bone Lab

Want to see how fossil specimens are properly prepared, catalogued and studied? Found a
fossil, bone fragment or gem you'd like to identify? Then visit the Paleo Lab on the
Texas Memorial Museum's first floor. There, you can watch a working paleontologist in
action, ask questions and handle a variety of "touch specimens." Discovery Drawers
presents fossils from the museum's collection and provide a range of informational
resources, such as how to plan a field trip and how to care for and display your own
specimens. "It's not so much an exhibit as an actual working lab," says TNSC Director
Ed Theriot. The lab is staffed during regular museum hours, including special event days.